Bad luck or Inexperiance?

[Cyberstatic1013]

So ive had my new computer for 5 months now, and im looking at trying to OC it a little more but not sure if I should try and risk breaking a great computer.

This is my system:
C2D E6600 2.4ghz @ 2.93ghz (Watercooled)
Asus P5W DH Deluxe
OCZ Platinum 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 1000mhz (PC2 8000)
OCZ GameXStream 700 watt PSU
BFG 8800GTS 640mb (Watercooled)

I pulled the metal covers off the north and south bridges on the mobo and added a 40mm fan on each of their heat sinks as well. I also have the optional fan installed on the CPU's voltage regulator heat sink. The case is an extremely well ventelated full tower with 3 80mm 74 cfm Thermal take fans sucking air in at the front, and 3 of the same fans on the back for exaust.

I obviously built the system with the intention of OC'ing it, but I was only able to get to about 3.06 ghz before it became unstable and I was no longer able to boot correctly. Ive read many guides to OC'ing on this board/cpu combo, and I turned off all the unnecissary stuff in the bios. I adjusted the FSB/Ram ratio as I went to keep the ram at or under it's rated 1000mhz but it seemed no matter what I did I couldent get past around the 3ghz mark.

I know alot of other people, the majority in fact can get past 3.0ghz with cheaper components running on stock air cooling and it's hard to believe I cant get past 3ghz with the setup I have. So my question is this do you think I was just unlucky and got a chip that doesnt want to OC past 3ghz or that im doing something wrong? Im at work right now so I cant post my exact bios settings but I will do that when I get home.

Thanks for any info or input anyone can provide.

 

[battousai831]

So ive had my new computer for 5 months now, and im looking at trying to OC it a little more but not sure if I should try and risk breaking a great computer.

This is my system:
C2D E6600 2.4ghz @ 2.93ghz (Watercooled)
Asus P5W DH Deluxe
OCZ Platinum 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2 1000mhz (PC2 8000)
OCZ GameXStream 700 watt PSU
BFG 8800GTS 640mb (Watercooled)

I pulled the metal covers off the north and south bridges on the mobo and added a 40mm fan on each of their heat sinks as well. I also have the optional fan installed on the CPU's voltage regulator heat sink. The case is an extremely well ventelated full tower with 3 80mm 74 cfm Thermal take fans sucking air in at the front, and 3 of the same fans on the back for exaust.

I obviously built the system with the intention of OC'ing it, but I was only able to get to about 3.06 ghz before it became unstable and I was no longer able to boot correctly. Ive read many guides to OC'ing on this board/cpu combo, and I turned off all the unnecissary stuff in the bios. I adjusted the FSB/Ram ratio as I went to keep the ram at or under it's rated 1000mhz but it seemed no matter what I did I couldent get past around the 3ghz mark.

I know alot of other people, the majority in fact can get past 3.0ghz with cheaper components running on stock air cooling and it's hard to believe I cant get past 3ghz with the setup I have. So my question is this do you think I was just unlucky and got a chip that doesnt want to OC past 3ghz or that im doing something wrong? Im at work right now so I cant post my exact bios settings but I will do that when I get home.

Thanks for any info or input anyone can provide.

what are your temps?
Is the ram set to 1.1?
what are your volts on the cpu and north?
have you tried dropping the cpu multiplier to see if you can increase the fsb more?

sounds like you might have gotten a dud cpu.

 

[Orion63]

What is your purpose in overclocking? If you are doing it just to do it, then expect the possibility of breakage.

If you want to eek out every bit you can, then do baby steps. What I did was write down the original settings at stock speeds then do your tests (baseline). I actually had a list of everything I was tweaking with the test results. There are a lot of variables and combinations of tweaks and sometimes getting the memory tweaked just right counters your processor tweaks. Eventually you will find the right combination. It's possible that the tweaking won't net you more than, say 10% increase in performance - but is it worth risking it? What your temperatures, artifacts during testing, and crashes.

I used to overclock the AMDs, but after a few motherboard replacements it wasn't worth the small performance increases. I have overclocked a few old Intels, but still not worth it. Right now, I'm just for stability and I want to PLAY!

Overclock with caution - you have some good parts that can do it!